Vladivostok Travel Forum

Some questions:

1. How to get to Vladivostok from Shanghai? Any flights? Is train an option?

2. How to get a visa (for US and/or PRC nationals)?

3. Why should someone want to see that city/area? Or shouldn't they?

Train is certainly an option, probably the least expensive. There is a car from Harbin to Vladivostok and also a car to Habarovsk.

I also found, there said to be a bus from Harbin to Vladivostok, it is said to cost 380 RMB. Train is more (ca. 60? Euro).
Usually I prefere trains but the Harbin-Vladik timetable is horrible: the train (actually, a single sleeper) most of the time stays waiting for a train to be attached to.

The direct "train" does not go every day, only on Wednesday and Saturday - but you can go changing the trains in SuiFanHe and Grodekovo on the border every day.

IN THEORY Chinese LüXinShe can even issue a through single ticket to Vladivostok from Shanghai with fixed Shanghai-Beijing, "Open" Beijing-Harbin and "Open" Harbin-Vladivostok reservation. I am afraid, most ticket ladies would deny and insist, you first go to Harbin hence lose the degressivity of the ticket and money - grrrrrrr. Chinese ticketers are said to violate (willingly? unwillingly?) the SMPS treaty and deny more complicated through tickets.

Anyway, you absolutely can go to Vladivostok by train and the train fare will be much less than the airplane.

http://www.transport.ru/20/timetbl/intern/vlad_harb.htm

Explanation of what you see. Departure from Harbin on Wednesday and Saturday.

Train number 17 Harbin-SuiFanHe departs 21:21, arrives SuiFanHe 7:48. It has the direct sleeper to Vladivosotk. The sleeper's boogies will be changed and it will depart SuiFanHe at 9:30 with the train number 402. It arrives Grodekovo (Moscow time!) at 5:46, departs 10:18, arrives Ussuriisk 13:12, ddeparts 19:21 and finally arrives Vladivostok at 21:52 (Moscow time!!!).

Warning: all times are Moscow times. So it will be in Vladik an ungodly hour in the middle of the night.
Maybe a silly suggestion: since Ussuriisk is pretty close to Vladik, de-train in Ussuriisk and sleep there.
The train arrives in Ussuriisk at 13:12 (Moscow time) so it's not THAT horrible.

I am not sure, this information is 100% correct but the traffic is very frequent. Warning: buy tickets only from Railway or LüXinShe, NEVER from private agencies - they will mark up the tickets heavily.

Forgot the visa info. For PRC nationals it's relatively easy: use www.waytorussia.com For Americans - unless you are OFICIALLY in China on residence/work visa it's impossible, you cn get Russian visa only in USA than. If you can prove, you are living/studying/working in China than it's OK. The consulate in Shanghai or HK is much better than in Beijing. Look again at www.waytorussia.com, they also have info about visa support, etc.

To be more precise, that is not a "train" but a "stayin" :-(

There are three interesting through cars on the Russian Far East:

- Habarovsk-Ussuriisk-SuiFanHe-Harbin
- Vladivostok-Ussuriisk-SuiFanHe-Harbin
- Moscow-Ussuriisk-Hasan-Tumangan-P'yongYang

For unknown reasons, these cars spend half days between Ussuriisk and the "other" end of the line.
Once they pass the Ussuriisk-Tumangan/Ussuriisk-SuiFanHe, they go on the Chinese or Korean side pretty much OK. Same about BEFORE Ussuriisk. I have no idea, why the connection precisely at Ussuriisk is so silly. Of course, given the price of Moscow-Tumangan sleeping supplement in 4-bed Korean car being 1800 Roubles there is little to wonder an nothing to complain - for that price normally you barely can reach St. Pete.

You probably seen Helmut's pictures:

http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/ru/ticket%2Btimetable/20061225_RES_Moskva_Tumangan.jpg
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/ne/North_Korea/pix.html

Oops, I was too fast about PRC citizens and visa. It seems, all that is not very easy. PRC is categorized as "migration-challenged region" and you need to be resourceful.

My uneducated guess is, that new regime is due some obligations towards European Union... or maybe "just" the usual game.

This is an other visa site:

http://getvisa.ru/invitation/invprice, according it the visa support for Chinese costs 7000 Roubles (= ca. 200 Euro).

GyuriFT, Lev - this is a wealth of information well beyond what I anticipated (but am happy). The bus option seems far superior to the train.

Is there anything to do/see in the region using Vladivostok as a base? I'm just tentatively exploring a trip up there (I guess it'd be utterly foolish to go in February, should wait until Summer, right?)

Wow, great reply about getting to Vlad!

Yes, february is the least interesting month to come - very windy and cold.

If you want to come in spring I'd reccomend April and first half of May , weather is usually nice. Second half of march and june are very rainy, the reast of the summer and september and begining of October is just gorgeous. August is very hot and humid. You can read more about weather and climate in section "Vladivostok today" on my page www.discoveryclub.info

If you still need invitation to obtain Russian visa, it is also not a problem - I;ll write in details how to do it!

Good luck with your trip, Julia

GyuriFT has far more details than I could ever remember. I took this train from Vlad to Harbin January 2005. See my Asia page and its travelogues for details:

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/c51e6/3/

It was about -25 C and we managed to maintain warmth in the unheated train car that sat in the siding for 8 hours by drinking vodka and stealing extra blankets. Bring a leatherman plyers device so that you can open the locked bathrooms. Make sure your passport is in pristine condition; I had a bit of an adventure because of mine.

GyuriFT, is it you who I still owe a scan of the ticket for that leg?

Yes, it's probably me.

Sorry to ignore all for a week, last week wasn't of much joy for me. I am back more-less.